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I didn't overall like clown Stilgar though. I chuckled most of the time at his comedic bits, but it was almost too much like the National Lampoon Doon - the scene where Paul sees IIRC the pretzel sign, and the Liet Kynes analog remembers the scripture that says something like "His hearing will be excellent, as for his eyes, we don't don't, he may wear glasses" And then the Kynes analog says "Even this is consistent with the legend!"

ToL - Ok here goes. There's quite a few aspects to it so I think bullet points is probably the best approach. Its not immediately transphobic to be concerned about the issue when its brought up. The usefulness of trans people in sport as a wedge issue relies on fairness in sport being something a lot of people are sincerely concerned about and it also relies on the effects of hormone therapy on the body being a poorly understood subject. A personal disclaimer here, obviously I have first hand experience of switching from a testosterone endocrine system to an estrogen one. The outcome in my case has left me as one of the physically weakest women I know, the idea of me having an unfair advantage is laughable to me and I sometimes struggle to set that aside and talk in the general case rather than my specific one. If I seem impatient/frustrated at times I'd ask you to keep this in mind and give me the benefit of the doubt. Also worth noting that the argument here is exclusively for trans people who were assigned male at birth (AMAB), there's no question of fairness towards other athletes that comes into the picture for trans men participating in men's sport so I'm not going to discuss their situation at all. It's also not the situation you're asking about. Unfair advantage: Obviously even from a maximally trans-inclusive perspective this is going to be a spectrum. Someone who has not had any medical intervention and is running on a testosterone endocrine system is going to have some advantages in many sports as a result. This completely sucks for any trans people that are happy with just social transition, but there really isn't a universally fair way to resolve this one so most people (including me) accept that there will be a requirement to undergo medical intervention prior to being allowed to compete in women's sport. This can lead to a few positions No amount of medical intervention is sufficient or trustworthy so AMAB can never be allowed to compete in women's sport. This perspective does not align well with the science I'm familiar with and am inclined to trust, and obviously my own personal experience, and chooses to throw a tiny minority group under the bus in the name of the majority. Yes there are some disputes around the research, there are some permanent changes from a testosterone puberty that will persist even after hormone therapy - most obvious being height - but their existence isn't necessarily of sufficient significance to declare it an unfair advantage. There are tall cis women as well and their height isn't treated as an unfair advantage so why should the same height from a trans woman be a problem? The primary advantages relate to muscle/strength and those are changed with medical treatment. You must undergo x treatments for y years to be allowed to compete in women's sport. The main one here is hormone therapy and the standard timeframe I've seen for that is 2 years. The research that indicates this is sufficient to eliminate significant unfair advantages is what aligns with my own personal experience and there has not been a sudden avalanche of trans women winning in sports which implement this policy. It attempts to balance the rights of the minority with fairness towards the majority and is the option I favour, and it has the variables of what treatment is required and how long they need to be maintained which can be tweaked if future research requires updates to the criteria. Testosterone is actually the problem so rather than requiring specific treatments which may be insufficient for some individuals, require treatment and test testosterone levels. This one sounds good in theory, and personally would favour me significantly - I have far less testosterone than any average cis woman, let alone those in sport...which actually highlights one of the major issues with it. If you only apply this standard to AMAB trans people in sport then its a major double standard, but applying it to cis women as well winds up gross and also unfair. I'd argue this winds up far more harmful to cis women, enabling sports organizations dominated by men to control what women's bodies are acceptable in a sport and excluding those they deem unacceptable and at the end of the day there are ~50-100x more cis women than there are AMAB trans people to be impacted by it. Its a can of worm and opening it is a bad idea. I'm not sure these bullet points are actually making up a logical structure but I've got no better idea for how to break this up so I'm rolling with it Sport is inherently unfair. It's already selecting for the genetic freaks to rise to the top, Michael Phelps dominated mens swimming due to physiological advantages that are absolutely "unfair" but he won the genetic lottery and that's OK. So its a question of which advantages are not just significant but also unreasonable. There are many ways you can look at that, in a team sport the most obvious is whether the advantage compromises the safety of other participants. Once you've eliminated any strength advantage I don't think you're seeing anything major in this category that is fundamentally different to competing against someone that was just more physically blessed than you from their genetics. If a taller trans woman would be such a major problem, then the sport should be segregated by height categories as that's the relevant metric - its not at all fair to tell a 5'6" trans woman she can't play women's basketball because 6'4" trans women exist while there are 6'4" cis women competing. When the research indicates a significant advantage that exceeds the variability within cis women, ie even average trans women are going to rate higher than the top tier of cis women in that category then I think you've got your argument to punt it up to my above bullet points. If treatment eliminates or minimizes the advantage then you can require treatment, if the advantage cannot be eliminated then you've got a complex job of weighing up multiple unfair options but none of the advantages which outlast treatment rise to that level of significance in my opinion. This does have a significant interplay with my below point as well however... The numbers of trans women are very low. The people that make a lot of noise about this on the public stage are massively overinflating the size of the issue. To go back to the UK example from which this thread spun off, even after the major increase in referrals to the NHS that's less than 1% of the population. I don't have the numbers on hand to know what percentage of that <1% are AMAB and would pick women's sport if attempting to compete so lets just split that upper limit in half and say 0.5%. I'm going to continue focusing on height - even if every trans woman was as tall as the top 10% of cis women then in a group of 100 women you're increasing the "tall" numbers from 10 to 11. Its just not going to be that impactful on the sport, hence my above point about it needing to be a larger advantage than a "lucky" cis woman gets. If there were a lot more trans people, then the advantage would look more significant than genetic luck so you'd have an argument for adjusting that equation. Nothing we've seen in sports so far shows any advantage retained by trans women after treatment to be outshining the hard work, skill and genetic gifts of the cis women they're competing against in terms of getting to the top. You've got a handful of individuals that can be pointed to as competing at the top level but even then they're not dominating in a way that points to a major unfair advantage - Fallon Fox was never the champion of her division even in UFC, Lia Thomas can't hold a candle to Katie Ledecky, Laurel Hubbard* has won a single gold medal from a single appearance but that doesn't prove unfair dominance on its own. The risk of men claiming to be trans to win sporting events. I think there are multiple aspects here that make this a non-issue The kind of man who is competitive enough to think about going to these lengths is likely to devalue women's sport as the lesser prize anyway. If you're requiring an extended period of treatment then there's a lot more hoops to jump through than simply claiming to be trans, they're taking on all the social stigma and physical impacts of transition - its not an "easy" path to winning By far the biggest item for me is that they'd be subjecting themselves to gender dysphoria. I don't expect anyone that's cis to truly understand what they'd be doing to themselves but I've seen multiple cases of cis people socially transitioning (so not even going through the medican interventions) that have found themselves suicidal within a year or so. It's huge and phenomenally unpleasant and anyone stupid enough to claim to be trans just to win sport is signing up for a world of hurt that they'll regret. The number of men that might successfully go through with this is such an astronomically low number that I don't think its worth considering how they might abuse the process when deciding what a fair process is for a minority group. If they are undergoing all the requisite treatment then they're also losing the advantage that they had. If they didn't have the gifts and determination to win as men, I'd bet they're going to wind up unable to win as women as well and they'll have ruined their lives for nothing. And I'll bet you that anyone who transitions for sport and then detransitions afterwards (regardless of winning or not) will be punished with more social stigma than pretty much anyone. It's going to be a major deterrent for anyone choosing to follow their footsteps. I think I had another point or two but at this point I've forgotten what they were and this post is already enormous so I'll leave it there for now. To illustrate the way in which certain groups try to whip up concern about this issue among regular people I want to close off with an example from last year. There was a large beat up from conservative and gender critical groups about how a trans woman competed in the London Marathon last year and "beat 14,000 women" in it. They neglected to mention that she came 6159th, so barely in the top third. That's a single trans woman out of almost 20 thousand competitors who finished in the middle of the pack being treated like it was grossly unfair and ruined the performance for 14k other women - the overwhelming majority of whom didn't give a fuck. But if all you saw was coverage of the outrage, you'd think that this was indeed a major issue - that's not on you, the reader that isn't seeing anything else, its on the dishonest bigots trying to manufacture outrage. TL:DR - I argue that the advantages that remain after hormone treatment are not of a significant nature compared to genetic luck within the group of cis women, and that the tiny numbers of trans women involved are insufficient to be of concern to cis women getting a fair crack at competing.

I want Jerry Reinsdorf marched to The Hague in handcuffs and charged with crimes against humanity.

The Senate overwhelmingly passed the foreign aid bill 79 to 18. That was quicker than I expected. It’s also a notable increase from the February bill, which passed 70 to 29. Both Vermont Senators - Sanders and Welch - voted against it, as will as Oregon’ Jeff Merkley. The rest of the nays were dumbass Republicans.

The Freys enjoy Lannister protection. Hoster, Robb, and Tywin are gone. Walder outlived them all. He doesn’t need Aegon’s protection right now. The closest threats are the wolfpack and the Brotherhood. Roslin’s child is a future threat. I wouldn’t want Jeyne to birth Robb’s baby. That’s no good for peace.

Yeh, that doesn't give him a pass here. It's like saying Hitler should be blamed for the Holocaust, but his SS deputies 'were only following orders'.

He was strategic. In conjunction with his propensity to massacre and lay waste to the kingdom, we should factor in as Hand he kept the kingdom peaceful for almost the whole of Aerys' reign.

Meera can find a way.

The whole realm was shocked by the disproportionate payback of the Red Wedding. The Freys do not get a pass.

Don’t really think the presidential vote is instructive at all at this point, but should be noted Pitt’s rep and squad member Summer Lee cruised to victory. AIPAC considered funding a challenger, but ultimately realized it was a lost cause.

I'd say you've just demonstrated why burning down ONE weirwood tree would NOT be effective. The very nature of a network is that taking out one 'hub' does not significantly damage the whole system. That logic stands on its own, but I actually suspect the entire Westerosi weirwood net is connected by a root system that goes extremely deep into the earth and reaches throughout the continent (Dorne probably excepted). None of which is to say I support the wider premiss. My working hypothesis is that once Bran fully realises himself as the Three-Eyed Crow (who is NOT Bloodraven), he will rebel against his conditioning.

Who packs their phone? It's a fucking prosthesis at this point.

Told ya'll there was a reason the Wolves overpaid for Gobert. They weren't willing to give up McDaniels. Dude's a monster 3 and D guy. 2-0 baby!

Your mother sounds like a cool lady. What’s annoying about traveling these days is I’ll have both my laptop and my iPad in my carry on, and going through security every airport has different procedures for whether and/or how to take them out. I swear they do this just to fuck with people like a perverse social psychologist. So I’ll just ask the TSA agent when I get to the bins what I’m supposed to do, and they always look at me like I’m an idiot. Fuck you TSA.

It's disrespectful to laugh at a corpse.

Thank you. I'm 55 now but I really don't feel like an old man. In many, many ways, I am still a boy. You should have heard the sound that came out of me when I unwrapped my Captain Picard and Miles Morales action figures at the weekend. They're in my Pantheon TM right now, having a laugh and a dance with some of my brother's Doctor Who crowd. I'm not even sorry.

I literally need my phone, computer, chargers for both, sun hat, SPF 50, a bra, and my medication. I can buy pretty much anything else on the streets of Naples (Italy). And, in fact, this has happened. I can tell you that nowhere in Italy can one find a decent lingerie shop or even an indecent one with a size 30E brassiere, though I’m pretty sure that one could find such in Brazil. Or perhaps Germany. The Germans are generally….well. MY MOTHER said, “Germans. It’s either two twin beds or an orgy.” MY MOTHER.

It's just a few interchangeable outfits. I'm not packing very much. The goddamn stuffed animals that are bribes for the kiddo took up a lot of space, but that part is done. Look, I get you Brits aren't allowed to have nice things anymore or fun in general, but this guy goes to a lot of resorts. Wrong. What kind of weirdo travels without their phone?

Jota injured again. Of course he is.

Happy belated name day!

Did I want a battle or one more fight sequence? Sure. But this was a strong finale nonetheless. I liked the way Toranaga finally revealed his plan. I don't know if the book ever mentioned the game of Go, but the way events unfolded for Toranaga reminded me of a way of playing Go where you can allow your opponent to take your pieces all the while you position the rest in a way that you gain the positional advantage on the board until it becomes clear you've won without needing to continue to trade pieces.

Thanks, Bird. I'm having cake with the family at the weekend! My baby sister is flying in from Geneva and it will be lovely to see her. We've not been in the same room since the Beforetimes.

Happy birthday, Spocky!

It was my birthday the other day. My brother got me my first ever cordless drill (it's a beauty), a laser-beam measurer thingy (OMG WE LIVE IN THE FUTURE), and these socks, which are absolutely lovely. I am blessed.

Isn't it written into the city charter that NYC's Mayor WILL be corrupt, no exceptions ever?